Why charcoal is the first great cooking fuel
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Date: 2025-02-09
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Comments and reviews: 20
ladyofthemasque
Technically, coal still has a lot of impurities & volatiles (evaporative substances. When you turn wood into charcoal in a kiln, you heat up the wood so that its many volatiles escape and go elsewhere. The charcoal that is left behind does not have those liquidy volatiles, so the energy spent in burning the fuel doesn't get wasted on turning those liquidy things into gaseious things. When you do the same to coal, you get coke, which is the same refining process.
Just as charcoal burns hotter than wood because the heat isn't being spent first in burning off the volatiles, coal that has been turned into coke burns a LOT hotter than wood, charcoal, and coal. Prior to the use of propane, natural gas, and/or electricity in modern foundries, coke was the primo-grade stuff required to heat up the raw ore in smelting furnaces to produce liquid iron. You can smelt iron out of iron ore with just charcoal (or coal, but you'll still have to beat the slag out of the iron in the forging process.
Using coke, with its far higher burning temperatures, allows the smelting process to create a high quality iron that contains very few impurities, because the slag minerals that aren't iron have a much lower melting temperature than the iron, and will literally melt & run off and away from the iron mass. The hotter the temperature, the more readily the non-iron minerals go away, leaving behind an iron mass that is ready for the Bessemer Process.
(Short introduction to the Bessemer Process: To turn Iron into steel, you need to have very specific percentage ratios of carbon to iron, plus some other small percentages of other substances, such as chromium for making stainless steel, etc. The problem with a coke or charcoal based smelting process is that the carbon tends to get as high as 5% by the end of the process, which creates pig iron, a very brittle iron that's very good for making cast iron cookware, but not much in the way of sturdy tools, etc. You want to get the carbon % down to around 1%-3%, depending on the type of steel. But since this is very difficult to gauge when starting with raw ore, the Bessemer Process purifies the carbon out of the iron by blasting it with pure oxygen during the refining stage of the smelting process. Once the % of carbon drops to as close to zero as possible, you can weigh the raw iron, and then reintroduce carbon into it at the correct ratios (such as 98 parts iron to 2 parts carbon, to get a 2% steel) during the final refining process, in order to create the exact kind of steel that you want)
Modern steel factories use various types of gas and/or electricity, so they don't have to worry nearly as much about too much carbon being introduced into the metal mix, but they still often go through a few refining stages in order to control the quality of the iron prior to injecting it with carbon, etc, in the correct proportions. But in order to get to the point where we could switch over to, say, hydroelectricity to power our smelters, we had to go through the Industrial Revolution, which was our learning process. Sometimes trial-an-error (the way most innovations had been made in the past, but with a LOT of observations, measurements, data recording, and analysis of what was going on.
Make no mistake: a lot of that WAS dependent on charcoal. Literal thousands of acres of forests were depleted across Europe for the forge fires of the later Middle Ages, when there were all manner of wars raging back and forth, and the Renaissance was starting to make it easier to experiment with various metal creations. Copper smelting, tin smelting, bronze casting, a lot of that was done with charcoal as the fuel. So your favorite cast iron skillet, your copper-bottomed cooking pots, the steel spoons and wire sieves, all of those cooking implements are integrated with the use of charcoal--heck, charcoal was even the primary choice for pottery firing and glassmaking, so cookpots and bottles also have a lot to thank charoal for!
The vast majority of all your kitchen implements are tied to charcoal, when you consider the impact it's had on ceramics, glassware, and metal crafting!
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Technically, coal still has a lot of impurities & volatiles (evaporative substances. When you turn wood into charcoal in a kiln, you heat up the wood so that its many volatiles escape and go elsewhere. The charcoal that is left behind does not have those liquidy volatiles, so the energy spent in burning the fuel doesn't get wasted on turning those liquidy things into gaseious things. When you do the same to coal, you get coke, which is the same refining process.
Just as charcoal burns hotter than wood because the heat isn't being spent first in burning off the volatiles, coal that has been turned into coke burns a LOT hotter than wood, charcoal, and coal. Prior to the use of propane, natural gas, and/or electricity in modern foundries, coke was the primo-grade stuff required to heat up the raw ore in smelting furnaces to produce liquid iron. You can smelt iron out of iron ore with just charcoal (or coal, but you'll still have to beat the slag out of the iron in the forging process.
Using coke, with its far higher burning temperatures, allows the smelting process to create a high quality iron that contains very few impurities, because the slag minerals that aren't iron have a much lower melting temperature than the iron, and will literally melt & run off and away from the iron mass. The hotter the temperature, the more readily the non-iron minerals go away, leaving behind an iron mass that is ready for the Bessemer Process.
(Short introduction to the Bessemer Process: To turn Iron into steel, you need to have very specific percentage ratios of carbon to iron, plus some other small percentages of other substances, such as chromium for making stainless steel, etc. The problem with a coke or charcoal based smelting process is that the carbon tends to get as high as 5% by the end of the process, which creates pig iron, a very brittle iron that's very good for making cast iron cookware, but not much in the way of sturdy tools, etc. You want to get the carbon % down to around 1%-3%, depending on the type of steel. But since this is very difficult to gauge when starting with raw ore, the Bessemer Process purifies the carbon out of the iron by blasting it with pure oxygen during the refining stage of the smelting process. Once the % of carbon drops to as close to zero as possible, you can weigh the raw iron, and then reintroduce carbon into it at the correct ratios (such as 98 parts iron to 2 parts carbon, to get a 2% steel) during the final refining process, in order to create the exact kind of steel that you want)
Modern steel factories use various types of gas and/or electricity, so they don't have to worry nearly as much about too much carbon being introduced into the metal mix, but they still often go through a few refining stages in order to control the quality of the iron prior to injecting it with carbon, etc, in the correct proportions. But in order to get to the point where we could switch over to, say, hydroelectricity to power our smelters, we had to go through the Industrial Revolution, which was our learning process. Sometimes trial-an-error (the way most innovations had been made in the past, but with a LOT of observations, measurements, data recording, and analysis of what was going on.
Make no mistake: a lot of that WAS dependent on charcoal. Literal thousands of acres of forests were depleted across Europe for the forge fires of the later Middle Ages, when there were all manner of wars raging back and forth, and the Renaissance was starting to make it easier to experiment with various metal creations. Copper smelting, tin smelting, bronze casting, a lot of that was done with charcoal as the fuel. So your favorite cast iron skillet, your copper-bottomed cooking pots, the steel spoons and wire sieves, all of those cooking implements are integrated with the use of charcoal--heck, charcoal was even the primary choice for pottery firing and glassmaking, so cookpots and bottles also have a lot to thank charoal for!
The vast majority of all your kitchen implements are tied to charcoal, when you consider the impact it's had on ceramics, glassware, and metal crafting!
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ladyofthemasque
NOTE: if you live in the Pacific Northwest, or any other location with a lot of pines, firs, and other pitch-heavy evergreen trees, as well as anywhere with a lot of loam-type soil, lots of organics in it, DO NOT DIG A PIT FOR A GROUND FIRE. First off, it's probably illegal in those areas. (It absolutely is in my region) Second, you WILL probabliy cause the pitch-rich roots to start smoldering underground, some of which could wind up flaring into a wildfire days or even weeks later. yes, even if it's freezing outside or it's been raining for a solid week. Pitch is an ember-extender as well as a flame-extender.
Third, the kinds of soil that have a lot of organics in it are also a type of ember-extender, as loam is a sort of proto-peat. Literally, peat is time-compressed organics that can be dug up, dried out, and lit for fuel. It's like the pre-precursor to coal. Only dig pits for ground fires in areas that don't have a lot of pitchy roots or organic-rich soils. If your soil is sandy and there aren't pine trees anywhere around, you should be okay. but do look up the local regulations on ground fires. (You might be able to find out by calling the non-emergency fire department line for a polite inquiry, as they absolutely should know the local regulations for ground fires, yea or nay)
In my area, the regulations on ground fires means digging out a much larger pit, lining it with gravel & sand, then including a barrier of some sort (steel half-barrel, fire-rated concrete liner, firebricks, etc, and containing the fire only within that pit.
. Fun fact, btw: Fire Clay, the kind of clay that can withstand extremely high temperatures, is most often found in the layer of soil below coal seams. So the best kind of clay for the fire bricks in your woodstove, furnace, or fireplace is already associated with the coal that was often used to burn within it!
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NOTE: if you live in the Pacific Northwest, or any other location with a lot of pines, firs, and other pitch-heavy evergreen trees, as well as anywhere with a lot of loam-type soil, lots of organics in it, DO NOT DIG A PIT FOR A GROUND FIRE. First off, it's probably illegal in those areas. (It absolutely is in my region) Second, you WILL probabliy cause the pitch-rich roots to start smoldering underground, some of which could wind up flaring into a wildfire days or even weeks later. yes, even if it's freezing outside or it's been raining for a solid week. Pitch is an ember-extender as well as a flame-extender.
Third, the kinds of soil that have a lot of organics in it are also a type of ember-extender, as loam is a sort of proto-peat. Literally, peat is time-compressed organics that can be dug up, dried out, and lit for fuel. It's like the pre-precursor to coal. Only dig pits for ground fires in areas that don't have a lot of pitchy roots or organic-rich soils. If your soil is sandy and there aren't pine trees anywhere around, you should be okay. but do look up the local regulations on ground fires. (You might be able to find out by calling the non-emergency fire department line for a polite inquiry, as they absolutely should know the local regulations for ground fires, yea or nay)
In my area, the regulations on ground fires means digging out a much larger pit, lining it with gravel & sand, then including a barrier of some sort (steel half-barrel, fire-rated concrete liner, firebricks, etc, and containing the fire only within that pit.
. Fun fact, btw: Fire Clay, the kind of clay that can withstand extremely high temperatures, is most often found in the layer of soil below coal seams. So the best kind of clay for the fire bricks in your woodstove, furnace, or fireplace is already associated with the coal that was often used to burn within it!
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Treblaine
2: 50 Not quite. 300 million years ago trees were like plastic today: no microorganism could break them down. So as trees fell down due to storms the wood just piled up higher and higher for millions of years hardly rotting at all and being buried. After a geologically relatively short period micro-organisms finally evolved to break down trees and finally the carbon cycle began returning carbon captured by trees to the air. But for that couple million years is where all coal came from.
Now while the dead wood was not rotting it was still decaying over millions of years, and the heat and pressure would strip off a lot of the hydrogen but also leave a lot of oils. Coal is a carbon sponge full of all sorts of tar like chemicals, when coke is made is when coal is heated into an air-tight container to boil off all these volatile oils to be used for various purposes.
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2: 50 Not quite. 300 million years ago trees were like plastic today: no microorganism could break them down. So as trees fell down due to storms the wood just piled up higher and higher for millions of years hardly rotting at all and being buried. After a geologically relatively short period micro-organisms finally evolved to break down trees and finally the carbon cycle began returning carbon captured by trees to the air. But for that couple million years is where all coal came from.
Now while the dead wood was not rotting it was still decaying over millions of years, and the heat and pressure would strip off a lot of the hydrogen but also leave a lot of oils. Coal is a carbon sponge full of all sorts of tar like chemicals, when coke is made is when coal is heated into an air-tight container to boil off all these volatile oils to be used for various purposes.
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Darisiabgal7573
The reason to use charcoal for cooking is simple.
1. Dehydration. When wood is heated it produces steam. Steam and fire do not mix well.
2. Volatile organics and smoke production. Wood that has not been cured for a long period tends to smoke, a lot. These volatiles will burn, but much of them just escape, leading to the phrase smoke gets in your eyes (and burns.
3. energy per mass density. The weight is low, and there is significant aromatic carbon formation (robbing 20% of the energy) but the water is gone and so are the smoke producing volatiles, grey smoke does not produce heat, it’s just annoying.
Because it does not produce its ideal to use in a kitchen or workshop.
When I BBQ I put the wood for the next time in the BBQ oven off to the far side. This drives the water and more volatile organics out of the wood.
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The reason to use charcoal for cooking is simple.
1. Dehydration. When wood is heated it produces steam. Steam and fire do not mix well.
2. Volatile organics and smoke production. Wood that has not been cured for a long period tends to smoke, a lot. These volatiles will burn, but much of them just escape, leading to the phrase smoke gets in your eyes (and burns.
3. energy per mass density. The weight is low, and there is significant aromatic carbon formation (robbing 20% of the energy) but the water is gone and so are the smoke producing volatiles, grey smoke does not produce heat, it’s just annoying.
Because it does not produce its ideal to use in a kitchen or workshop.
When I BBQ I put the wood for the next time in the BBQ oven off to the far side. This drives the water and more volatile organics out of the wood.
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XDC13
Very interesting idea about the activated charcoal with water. Im an anthracologist (study wood charcoal from archaeological context) and sometime we see the structure of the charcoal as vitrified, a little bit like lava, where all the carbon is fuse, and have less pore than if it was like the wood structure. The reasont for this vitrification is not weel know, probably from the intensity of the combustion, but some people think its from rapid quenching with water. I want to start a phd in experimental archaeology to investigated those question. I also think that the rapid change of temperature would cause crak in the charcoal wich would infact reduce the surface area compared to the xylem (vessle and tracheid) structure of the wood. Nice video, not a very common subjet
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Very interesting idea about the activated charcoal with water. Im an anthracologist (study wood charcoal from archaeological context) and sometime we see the structure of the charcoal as vitrified, a little bit like lava, where all the carbon is fuse, and have less pore than if it was like the wood structure. The reasont for this vitrification is not weel know, probably from the intensity of the combustion, but some people think its from rapid quenching with water. I want to start a phd in experimental archaeology to investigated those question. I also think that the rapid change of temperature would cause crak in the charcoal wich would infact reduce the surface area compared to the xylem (vessle and tracheid) structure of the wood. Nice video, not a very common subjet
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trstmeimadctr
Coal is only able to exist because of the combination of the atmostphere having more than double its current oxygen and trees evolving wood, aka lignin, before any bacteria evolved that coultd break down the lignin of dead trees. So for several hundred million years, on a planet COVERED with trees, the dead trees fell and there they remained, undecayed, forming deep layers that compressed and were covered more and more until they were coal. It may be possible that the extreme amount of luck involved for humanity's first industrial fuel source to exist is actually a barrier to the existence of advanced aliens. Isn't it weird how these things are related
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Coal is only able to exist because of the combination of the atmostphere having more than double its current oxygen and trees evolving wood, aka lignin, before any bacteria evolved that coultd break down the lignin of dead trees. So for several hundred million years, on a planet COVERED with trees, the dead trees fell and there they remained, undecayed, forming deep layers that compressed and were covered more and more until they were coal. It may be possible that the extreme amount of luck involved for humanity's first industrial fuel source to exist is actually a barrier to the existence of advanced aliens. Isn't it weird how these things are related
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kateonianlaw1127
Activated charcoal is activated by passing superheated steam through a bed of charcoal in a rotary kiln and the steam eats out particles in the charcoal increasing the surface area volume. Briquettes charcoal is made by charcoal powder mixed with limestone, sawdust, binders (like starches) and water, then pressed and dried. The easiest way to make charcoal is to take small logs and burn them until no more fames come off them and then pull them out of the fire with tongs and place them in a tall sealable steel container. The carbon monoxide/dioxide will keep the air from reaching the charcoal and allow it to cool. Easy charcoal.
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Activated charcoal is activated by passing superheated steam through a bed of charcoal in a rotary kiln and the steam eats out particles in the charcoal increasing the surface area volume. Briquettes charcoal is made by charcoal powder mixed with limestone, sawdust, binders (like starches) and water, then pressed and dried. The easiest way to make charcoal is to take small logs and burn them until no more fames come off them and then pull them out of the fire with tongs and place them in a tall sealable steel container. The carbon monoxide/dioxide will keep the air from reaching the charcoal and allow it to cool. Easy charcoal.
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ScottMelville-w4g
I make my own home brew spirits it's legal here in new Zealand and the activited carbon I use is made of coconut shells it's cr 626 grade distillers carbon the company I get mine from is still spirits and I reuse my carbon by heating it red hot on an electronic element in a thin bottom bot and then I cool it in a stainless steel bucket and it's so ready to go it has literally shrunk the plastic of my filters from its heat it makes apon it touching the alcohol at 90% Ive never ever had this level of cleanness from fresh from the vacuum packed bag it never got as hot as it does now since I started cleaning the carbon for myself
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I make my own home brew spirits it's legal here in new Zealand and the activited carbon I use is made of coconut shells it's cr 626 grade distillers carbon the company I get mine from is still spirits and I reuse my carbon by heating it red hot on an electronic element in a thin bottom bot and then I cool it in a stainless steel bucket and it's so ready to go it has literally shrunk the plastic of my filters from its heat it makes apon it touching the alcohol at 90% Ive never ever had this level of cleanness from fresh from the vacuum packed bag it never got as hot as it does now since I started cleaning the carbon for myself
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alexandriatempest
I remember the Primitive Tech guy did a video years ago where he made charcoal. He stacked long pieces of wood in a cone so it was completely full. Then he covered it all with mud. Once the mud dried he broke a hole open at the bottom (ground level, and then made sure the too was broken off/free of the mud/clay. Next he started a fire at the bottom hole he made. Once it was jetting and he thought it had vented enough, he covered over the top and bottom holes, cutting off the air supply. Once it had cooled he broke it open and had alot of beautiful charcoal
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I remember the Primitive Tech guy did a video years ago where he made charcoal. He stacked long pieces of wood in a cone so it was completely full. Then he covered it all with mud. Once the mud dried he broke a hole open at the bottom (ground level, and then made sure the too was broken off/free of the mud/clay. Next he started a fire at the bottom hole he made. Once it was jetting and he thought it had vented enough, he covered over the top and bottom holes, cutting off the air supply. Once it had cooled he broke it open and had alot of beautiful charcoal
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robert-wr9xt
This nonsense about him advocating a purely subscription based model should make viewers rethink their trust.
I trusted him enough to immediately go to website. Only to FIND A SCAM PURCHASING MODEL WITH NO one time purchase.
Why
Money
I will tell my oldest brother about this scam. He mentions you once a year regarding your good and well intentioned videos.
This money grab is offensive to me and every poor person in the world. Shame
ps if my post disappears then I know I did the right thing in alerting YT viewers to this scam.
reply
This nonsense about him advocating a purely subscription based model should make viewers rethink their trust.
I trusted him enough to immediately go to website. Only to FIND A SCAM PURCHASING MODEL WITH NO one time purchase.
Why
Money
I will tell my oldest brother about this scam. He mentions you once a year regarding your good and well intentioned videos.
This money grab is offensive to me and every poor person in the world. Shame
ps if my post disappears then I know I did the right thing in alerting YT viewers to this scam.
reply
ladyofthemasque
Regarding activated charcoal, I was told that the best wood for this was punk wood, aka rotting wood. Punk wood is terrible for firewood because it doesn't produce any flame, and it's already so porous from being devoured by fungi that you can get a very good porosity that makes for a better impurities filter, once you take it through the charcoaling process. However, because it's so porous, it burns out quickly when used as a fuel source because there's not nearly as much of the carbon left as charcoal made from solid wood.
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Regarding activated charcoal, I was told that the best wood for this was punk wood, aka rotting wood. Punk wood is terrible for firewood because it doesn't produce any flame, and it's already so porous from being devoured by fungi that you can get a very good porosity that makes for a better impurities filter, once you take it through the charcoaling process. However, because it's so porous, it burns out quickly when used as a fuel source because there's not nearly as much of the carbon left as charcoal made from solid wood.
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commonsense-og1gz
this is called pyrolysis. you can use this for charcoal, but you can use it for wood gas, which will run in a car engine after it is filtered of unusable gasses and tar. in the past this was used as a substitute for petroleum in areas with low oil sources, or during wartime. one thing i don't know is if it can be used for gas ballooning. regardless, it can be piped like coal gas and natural gas for indoor use, just be mindful that it won't be cleaner than natural gas as it contains co2 and co.
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this is called pyrolysis. you can use this for charcoal, but you can use it for wood gas, which will run in a car engine after it is filtered of unusable gasses and tar. in the past this was used as a substitute for petroleum in areas with low oil sources, or during wartime. one thing i don't know is if it can be used for gas ballooning. regardless, it can be piped like coal gas and natural gas for indoor use, just be mindful that it won't be cleaner than natural gas as it contains co2 and co.
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Altorin
Adam you were so close to something cool.
Coal was formed because in the ancient times, 350 million years ago, there were trees, but there were no funguses.
without funguses, the trees wouldn't break down, they'd stack on top of eachother, not rotting for thousands of years, and then they got covered.
the beauty of coal is that the introduction of funguses into the biosphere made it so trees actually broke down, so basically no coal has been produced by the world for about 300 million years.
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Adam you were so close to something cool.
Coal was formed because in the ancient times, 350 million years ago, there were trees, but there were no funguses.
without funguses, the trees wouldn't break down, they'd stack on top of eachother, not rotting for thousands of years, and then they got covered.
the beauty of coal is that the introduction of funguses into the biosphere made it so trees actually broke down, so basically no coal has been produced by the world for about 300 million years.
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liverpoolirish208
The explanation of coal's formation is wrong. Plants evolves lignin and became woody, but with millions of years nothing could break it down. Large parts of the planet ended up buried under dead wood that nothing could break down, and so most of the atmospheric CO2 was sequestered. This became coal. Eventually, fungus evolved enzymes that could break down wood, and this stopped. The coal is the wood from the period between lignin evolving and fungus evolving a way of breaking it down.
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The explanation of coal's formation is wrong. Plants evolves lignin and became woody, but with millions of years nothing could break it down. Large parts of the planet ended up buried under dead wood that nothing could break down, and so most of the atmospheric CO2 was sequestered. This became coal. Eventually, fungus evolved enzymes that could break down wood, and this stopped. The coal is the wood from the period between lignin evolving and fungus evolving a way of breaking it down.
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Ithirahad
The first great cooking fuel, yes. and also the last. I've found that a small amount of smoke makes a lot of unexpected foods better, and you can't really make that with gas or electric. So, they are good cooking fuels (and infinitely more convenient in civilization, but not great. And anything like propane requires fancy gear and infrastructure to handle it. With charcoal, you just make a very primitive stove, light it up, and throw in some wood of choice. Smoky goodness ensues.
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The first great cooking fuel, yes. and also the last. I've found that a small amount of smoke makes a lot of unexpected foods better, and you can't really make that with gas or electric. So, they are good cooking fuels (and infinitely more convenient in civilization, but not great. And anything like propane requires fancy gear and infrastructure to handle it. With charcoal, you just make a very primitive stove, light it up, and throw in some wood of choice. Smoky goodness ensues.
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sethmoking
Great video. Only thing you got wrong is that the coal isn't hundreds of millions of years old. It's only about 4, 500 years old. It was made during Noah's flood, when massive amounts of vegetation was turned fairly rapidly into coal. You need heat, pressure, and time. But you don't need millions of years if you dramatically increase the amount of heat and pressure. Think, for example, of manmade diamonds. Very little time or heat needed, just a ton of pressure.
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Great video. Only thing you got wrong is that the coal isn't hundreds of millions of years old. It's only about 4, 500 years old. It was made during Noah's flood, when massive amounts of vegetation was turned fairly rapidly into coal. You need heat, pressure, and time. But you don't need millions of years if you dramatically increase the amount of heat and pressure. Think, for example, of manmade diamonds. Very little time or heat needed, just a ton of pressure.
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isaiahmaness9593
This method of making charcoal may also be one of the first methods we used to refine metal from ore! If you fill the pit with charcoal and pulverized copper ore, you can then plug it with a cap of turf and force air into the pit with a set of bag bellows. After a couple hours, you'll be able to sift the ashes to retrieve the copper (it'll be a lot like panning for gold, as the copper doesn't tend to fully condense at the bottom)
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This method of making charcoal may also be one of the first methods we used to refine metal from ore! If you fill the pit with charcoal and pulverized copper ore, you can then plug it with a cap of turf and force air into the pit with a set of bag bellows. After a couple hours, you'll be able to sift the ashes to retrieve the copper (it'll be a lot like panning for gold, as the copper doesn't tend to fully condense at the bottom)
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ralphyoung8274
You failed to mention COKE, which may have been intentional. Like wood, coal is dirty carbon with many impurities. When heated in an oxygen-free (anaerobic) environment, coal will vent these volatile organic compounds while leaving the carbon untouched. This is how coke is made and it's the same process you described for making charcoal. Therefore it is best to compare charcoal to coke as they are both distilled carbon.
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You failed to mention COKE, which may have been intentional. Like wood, coal is dirty carbon with many impurities. When heated in an oxygen-free (anaerobic) environment, coal will vent these volatile organic compounds while leaving the carbon untouched. This is how coke is made and it's the same process you described for making charcoal. Therefore it is best to compare charcoal to coke as they are both distilled carbon.
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rabidpeanut3703
8: 58 Yeah smoke is exactley what BBQ enthusiatsts across the world want. You need to think about the fact the creasote is only majorly present in some woods (mostly conifers and undesirable cooking woods. Others smoking woods and their flavor profiles are exactly what we are after. This is a misstep in the video but a great follow up opportunity to talk about smoking meats and why some woods are preferred over others.
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8: 58 Yeah smoke is exactley what BBQ enthusiatsts across the world want. You need to think about the fact the creasote is only majorly present in some woods (mostly conifers and undesirable cooking woods. Others smoking woods and their flavor profiles are exactly what we are after. This is a misstep in the video but a great follow up opportunity to talk about smoking meats and why some woods are preferred over others.
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aragusea
Cooking coals in an oxygen deficient atmosphere yields coke. Wood charcoal may be better for metallurgy than most coke. But there was simply not enough wood for iron production in England. It was glass manufacture which was originally stripping the country side bare. The carbon in coke or charcoal combines with the oxygen in ferrous/ferric oxides (iron ore) to for carbon monoxide or dioxide leaving iron and carbon ( slag.
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Cooking coals in an oxygen deficient atmosphere yields coke. Wood charcoal may be better for metallurgy than most coke. But there was simply not enough wood for iron production in England. It was glass manufacture which was originally stripping the country side bare. The carbon in coke or charcoal combines with the oxygen in ferrous/ferric oxides (iron ore) to for carbon monoxide or dioxide leaving iron and carbon ( slag.
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